AFFORD announced as Common Ground Initiative (CGI) Partner

We are glad to announce our partnership with Comic Relief as one of their Common Ground Initiative (CGI) delivery partners.

Comic Relief has announced five new delivery partners as part of the Common Ground Initiative (CGI), a programme set up to harness UK African communities’ ability to drive positive change in Africa. The new partnerships will receive a total of £4.7 million funding to help maximise the impact of investment by UK based African communities and champion women and girls’ rights.

Investment inlocal businesses across Africa has a vital role to play driving long-term economic growth - helping create jobs and build skills. African communities outside the continent are a key source of this investment and the CGI programme is funding new delivery partner, the African Foundation for Development (AFFORD), to encourage more investment in small businesses and build better links between business leaders in the UK and Africa."

African Foundation for Development (AFFORD) is a pioneer of the concept of ‘diaspora-development’.

Founded in 1994, the charity was responding to the disjuncture between mainstream international development and diaspora action. At the time, international development policymakers in donor countries and multilateral agencies did not understand, accept or recognise the nexus between effective development in Africa and the substantial and substantive action of the post-cold war African diaspora.

Early priorities were decidedly innovative, bold, profound, credible, practicable and ambitious responses to the prevailing disjuncture between mainstream international development and marginalised diaspora action. Thus in demonstrating the multiple dimensions of the diaspora input in the development of host and countries of origin, AFFORD set out its mission “to expand and enhance the contribution that Africans in the diaspora make to Africa's development”.

‘Sierra Leone’s Recovery and the Role of the Diaspora’

DEMAC & ABC EVENT

The ABC & DEMAC event on ‘Sierra Leone’s Recovery and the Role of the Diaspora’ was a very successful event and insightful discussion, which brought together diverse experiences and views on the contribution of Sierra Leoneans in the diaspora during the Ebola outbreak, as well as the business dimension on how the crisis impacted diaspora investment.

ABC Research Study

African Agency and the Band Aid Complex – A Personal Reflection

Africans in the diaspora have been challenging the fourth Band Aid response to the Ebola crisis, accusing it, in some cases, of perpetuating a ‘white saviour complex’. The criticisms are part of a long overdue and important debate about how Africa is represented, who speaks on behalf of the continent and what approaches really solve problems.